Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Merry Christmas, one and all,
And to all and one,

A Happy New Year!

I have dug the following book review of mine out from where it has long been buried in the archives of the BookThink website, where it was originally published as part of Professor Booknoodle's Scrapbook. I think it not inappropriate for the season.

Harrumph!
Every confounded year! The same blasted thing. One has finally gotten settled down from last year's assault upon peace and quiet when what happens? One is assaulted - assaulted! - by the same infernal, twinky, eye-pokey lights and mewling, mindless jittery music bleating out from out of every possible radio speaker: Red-necked reindeers, jingling rocks - and kissing Santas!
It's insufferable! Even if one make the small effort of turning off one's radio (and in my inner sanctum I can keep the infernal machine unplugged).... but just step outside - the confounded noise is vibrating the very air - if I just dare to step outside ... every tree, every mail box, every window, every squirrel hole, every service station and every place of business, indeed every place of public assembly has connived - connived! - to disturb the peaceful winter air with ear-rattling noise. Santas multiplied on every street corner, clanging hand noisy bells, ho-ho-hoing in one's face!
Why it even advances backward through the Calendar. Months before Christmas the blasted holiday is upon us like an unwelcome guest, crowding out other more sedate and less hectic observances.
Christmas is fast upon us and folks are rushing about willy-nilly looking for gifts. Not just one gift, but thousands of gifts. The shops are laden with bright garish things ... piled high with unsightly ties and sweaters that nobody in their right mind would ever wear. People bustle here and hustle there, arms full of doodads, eyesight impeded by packages piled high in their arms, so - if one has the temerity to attempt a mere casual evening stroll - they bump and jostle and generally impede one's progress.
Listen, I am not all harrumphery. I understand Christmas. It's a joyous season. A celebration of a blessed event. These things are, I believe, still there.... somewhere.

But I pine for a quieter, more sedate and personal observance. Where have the merry Yule logs gone? The happy carolers, who once were such a pleasant surprise outside one's door, have been drowned out by loudspeakers blaring Jinglebell Rock. If they do dare to walk about, house to house, they are lost amidst huge, inflatable polar bears, snowmen and garish green grinches, all bouncing madly about on snorts of machine-generated wind.
I know when the frantic Yuletide mania began. Haw! It began with a blasted, evil world war many years ago. A war so long ago most people have forgotten that it ever was. Only crusty historians remember and study it. It was a war that poisoned everything it touched. Even the story of Saint Nick was infected.
All that running around looking for the perfect gift. When, if people would just settle down and stand quiet for a moment they would realize just exactly what the perfect gift must be. Aside from the spiritual message (the true gift), is there anyone still reading here who does not know what it is? Is there any one reading who does not think a book to be the perfect gift? Is there anyone here who cannot remember receiving, at least once, a book as a Christmas present that turned out to be so exactly perfect?
I think not.

Many children are naturally of a scampish nature - mischievous imps tossing snowballs at the hats of innocent bypassers - the little scallywags! They eschew books to tend to misdeeds.
However there are those rare lucky children who eschew unruly mischief and are blessed with a particular receptive perception when gazing upon a book. They will have, always, a favorite tome. And it is usually near to reach. It little matters what book is perceived as perfection. What matters is that the book exists and it is near to hand, a friendly companion. When ideally situated, it is in hand, and open - and the hand is attached to a little person who has found a place of quiet refuge wherein to enter a world that opens only when the covers of their favorite book are opened.
Let me briefly take a passage from a great book that most people have forgotten was presented to the world as a Christmas gift by its author:"Child of the pure unclouded brow And dreaming eyes of wonder! Though time be fleet, and I and thou Are half a life asunder, The loving smile will surely hail The love gift of a fairy tale ..."
That verse, which opens Lewis Carroll's immortal story, Through the Looking Glass (and What Alice Found There), embodies - exactly - just that perfection for an uncanny tale that unfolds with such puissant magical grace.
In Alice in Wonderland, Carroll's heroine observes, rather peckishly, I always thought (child after my heart!), "What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?"
Harrumph, what indeed? What more perfect pair of books for wonderment ever were there, than those penned by Mr. Lewis Carroll?
But our purpose here is not to look at the perfect Christmas book. Our purpose is, instead, to examine a book from that dim wartime past that was thrust unsuspectingly into the hands of children come Christmas morning. It was a vessel of fear - a harbinger of future Christmas franticness and worry. Intrusively, it carried chaos and fear into the nursery.
This particular book is forgotten now to literary history and reader's alike. And, thankfully, unknown to the children of today. It is an object for collectors of old juveniles.
Among Christmas books there have always been some very pretty books, granted; but many have been packaged garishly with unrelievedly bright covers; but just open them up and one finds inside thick, pulpy, stiff paper with dull blotchy illustrations. ABC booklets with 1-2-3 and A-Apple pie simplicity. But, yes - there have been a good many pretty little books with pretty little chromolith pictures.

There have also been some pretty strange books. And, as I said, I would like to focus on just one of them, as I found it so unsettling. And if it is unsettling to an old curmudgeon like myself, what must it have been to a small child? It is possibly the strangest Christmas book to have ever been published, at least until Dr. Seuss arrived on the scene with his Grinch. What must the children have thought upon receiving the following harbinger of punishment?
It was titled Googly-Goo and His Ten Merry Men.

Written by Helen Jeffers and published by the Stecher Lithograph Company of Rochester, New York in 1916, the book presages somewhatHow the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Googly Goo looks like a roly-poly, self-indulgent brat. All of his Ten Men look just like him. Yes, they all look like brats! They look like Santa's Elves gone bad - they are sycophants to a one, dressed all in blue. They are Blue Meanies with googly eyes and vapid grins. Googly-Goo and his Ten Men don't like naughty children. And they mean to do something mean about it. And they do!

The text spells it out, short and simple, in poor, ragged verse, no less:

"This Googly-Goo, His Ten Men too,
In gowns of blue,
Got together and caught Saint Nick -
Before he knew it - Bound him, quick.
They stole his sled,
So full of toys,
The sled he'd packed for girls and boys!"

A page in the book shows Googly-Goo and his Ten Men flying through the air in Santa's sleigh, drawn by Santa's six reindeer. Googly-Goo is blowing a trumpet announcing his evil deed to the world. Where Santa would fly quietly over rooftops with an occasional Ho! Ho! Ho! and softly jingling sleigh bells, and a farewell Merry Christmas, Googly Goo must trumpet his arrival with noisy fanfare! The book also shows Santa tied up. The children are looking out of windows at this madness with horror.

So Googly-Goo - his Ten Men, too,
Hurried along, in gowns of blue,
Still shouting "O ye children bad,
Your Christmas surely will be sad.
You'll get no gifts from old Saint Nick,
Unless you mend your ways right quick!
Then lads and lassies shivered and shook, -
Out from their trundle-beds crept to look
At Googly-Goo, his Ten men too,
Hurrying on, in gowns of blue.

Harrumph! Kidnapping Santa Claus! What outrage! Does this book end happily? Could it? Haw! Well, in a manner of speaking, I suppose it does. If one doesn't think too much about it.
After warning about the "girls and boys who growl and poke and get angry when others joke", Googly-Goo relents - and releases Santa, for the children have all said their prayers. (I find it so strange and ominous that it is Googly-Goo who hears those prayers.) But Googly-Goo still holds some nefarious power over Santa and gives the jolly old man, who seems none the worse for having been trussed up, some instructions about filling stockings and distributing gifts. Harrumph, as if he, of all people, wouldn't know how.

Even though the children of the world buckled down and said their prayers and promised to be good and obey their parents, the damage had been done. Poor children! The fearful seed was planted. The message was clear. Even Saint Nick, in a world ravaged by a World War was not safe. (it was 1916, after all). If Santa is not safe from depredation and mischief, and kidnapping and trussings, how could mere innocent, helpless children be safe?

The Googly-Goo Xmas message?Hide and tremble in your trundle-beds, kiddies.
And so to end, let us hie back to Lewis Carroll and his 1867 Christmas message, found in the front of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:

"Lady dear, if Fairies may For a moment lay aside Cunning tricks and elfish play, 'Tis at happy Christmas-tide.We have heard the children say - Gentle children whom we love - Long ago, on Christmas Day, Came a message from above. Still, as Christmas-tide comes round, They remember it again - Echo still the joyful sound 'Peace on earth, good-will to men!'Yet the hearts must childlike be Where such heavenly guests abide; Unto children in their glee, All the year is Christmas-tide! Thus forgetting tricks and play For a moment, Lady dear, We would wish you, if we may, Merry Christmas, glad New Year!"

Sunday, December 11, 2011

A current literary fracas taking place within the halls of Academia and extending onto the WorldWideWeb reminded me of this post of mine from long ago in which I revived a critical review from even longer ago:

Old Review passing in review -- If there had been such modern slang in use .... Circular File - Slam-Dunk! :

Arrah Neil, or Times of Old. by G. P. R. James.
New York. Harper & Brothers.

"We suppose that this novel will be read, admired, praised and forgotten, like the preceding fictions of the same writer. The usual cant of eulogy will be lavished upon it, and it will then pass into oblivion, to be succeeded in three months by another equally valuable.

"In our opinion there is hardly an instance on record, of an author who has contrived to win an extensive reputation, as a writer of works of imagination, with such slender intellectual materials as Mr. James. No one has ever written so many books, purporting to be novels, with so small a stock of heart, brain and invention.

"He is continually infringing his own copyright, by reproducing his own novels. Far from being surprised that he has written so much, we are astonished that he has not written more. From his first novel, all the rest can be logically deduced; and the reason they have not appeared faster, may be found in the fact that he has been economical in the employment of amanuenses."

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Authors who publish only via electronic devices and not through the agency of paper media of some sort may well be forgotten by and irrelevant to the future.

Could this be true?

Will authors who publish only via electronic media be remembered by future generations? Through what agency? With what impact?

What is the shelf life of electronic storage? How quickly can we expect data stored in computers to be corrupted? Or, in other words, what is the temporal extent of of our electronically-stored social and cultural memory?

This is not to say that electronic media is not now host to a very vibrant literature, and an astoundingly complex ongoing (and often instantaneous) commentary on current events - but what is the shelf life of that literature? - of that commentary?

I am concerned that, with the vast information already stored via computers, accessible at the touch of a finger, humanity may lose its capacity for functional memory.

The extreme vastness of information now stored electronically already inhibits the accessibility of that data. This hardly addresses the banality and irrelevancy of much of that stored data. Consider that much that is vital and vibrant on a computer browser page is surrounded - and often lost - within a plethora of extraneous and irrelevant visual material (This extraneous lateral field is filled with both pictorial and textual content: advertising, links, moving images - a constant and confusing barrage of entreaties and enticements for the reader's attention to stray away from the desired text if not away from the very page on which the text is displayed).

As goes storage for the future - how does this barrage of irrelevant material impede or corrupt the relevant text? What extraneous materials visible on many a blog or news page will be thus corrupted into the content of the blog or news? The short shelf life of electronic storage, and the incredible complexity of binary configuration within a single electronic document bodes well for the future development and importance of Binary Archaeology.

There is an old literary joke - that was stated in a very humorous poem, once published in The New Yorker : "Ha hah! the book of my enemy has been remaindered!" Now, I guess the exultant cry might well be, "ha ha! the text of my enemy has been corrupted!"

The exigencies of Temporal Displacement require that I regularly subject my own memory to "data scrubbing".

Sunday, November 20, 2011

This, I say - THIS - was the true visage of Edgar Allan Poe. Noble of brow, clear-eyed, straight-forward and honest. Samuel S. Osgood produced, it seems, two portraits of Poe - one looking to left , and one looking to the right. Both show the same inviting, intelligent, noble visage. My thanks to Undine for using the first image on her blog (shown below), and thus reminding me of this forgotten portrait. Below the portraits will be seen a link to her excellent blog.

I'm dredging this up from a year long past - just because it still amuses me.

Everyone knows those most excellent delineations of horror and psychological madness penned into reality by Edgar A. Poe. He remains the Grand Master, the Puissant Thaumaturge. But fewer people know that Poe was one of America's most trenchant literary critics. In Poe we have the critic who did not mince words ... who did not pull his punches. A good review from Poe was surely earned through Herculean efforts by a writer laboring for a slim foothold on the slopes of Parnassus. But a critical pan .... could any author continue to blithely sail about on the literary sea after Poe had leveled a critical broadside at their plimsoll line?

The following example of Poe's caustic tongue-in-quill is from the December 1839 Burton's Gentleman's Magazine.

Harrumph, it is obvious that someone didn't pay their dues.

The Poets of America, Illustrated by one of Her Painters. Edited by John Keese . Colman, New York. 1839

"This long announced and much puffed volume has at last made its appearance. For the sake of the publisher, whose enterprising spirit deserves at least the good-will of the critic, we regret that we cannot award his beloved bantling a word of honest praise. We are compelled to pronounce this "splendid gift book", this loudly-vaunted specimen of American art and science, a common-place and profitless attempt. .... We are not sold to the will of any publisher; we never criticize a work without giving it an attentive perusal; we never obtain the gratuitous presentation of expensive publications by the promise of a puff; nor do we covertly slander a brother scribe because he is connected with another periodical. There are editors who cannot make these averments. The expression of our just opinions may give offense to various individuals, but we are not to be deterred in the execution of our critical duty.

"The editor of the Poets of America has woefully erred in the selection of some of the authors included in is list -- we know not whether he has mistaken the quality of the chosen from the lack of a kindred spirit with the sons of poetry -- from an ignorance of the attributes of of those whose name, although not enrolled on the catalogue of his acquaintance, have awakened the echoes of the bi-forked hill -- or whether he has suffered the interference of personal prejudice to warp his judgment and direct his choice.

"When we observe that some of the most celebrated poets of the day are excluded from his selection, and that various minor lights burn in the highest places, we are tempted to doubt the truth of his averment that he sought to present the finest specimens -- the true spirit of American poetry. There are names in his list 'alike to fortune and fame unknown', and the merits of their doings will not compensate the reader the offence of pushing better men from their stools. One writer, who has not yet attained the heights of mediocrity, has three pieces within eleven ages, while some of the best poets of the age, not being intimately connected with the publisher, are compelled tostand the ordeal of a single exhibition, and others are prohibited from all chance of show. "

[Poe gives us a sample ... and wretched it certainly is]

"The pictures are tolerably fanciful in conception, but their execution is paltry and ineffective; many of them are inferior to the woodcuts in Peter parley's school books. .... [the woodcuts] are inexplicable in their detail, and seem as if they had been engraved with a sharp fork on the back of a pewter plate."

E. A. Poe was one of the most incisive and important critics of his day. Most of his pronouncements on writers well stand the test of time.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

One could probably find just about any animal species being used as a decorative motif on a book cover. Here's a nifty little porcine quartet that scampered across the front cover of an old book. Can any of you guess the title of the book?

Saturday, January 29, 2011

There. I have said it. No amount of exposition on shiny paper, with photographs devised by the latest technology will budge me from this opinion.

Any number of persons will now run to their favorite new book and drag it out to defend it. harrumph. All such efforts are in vain. Those who prefer the old do not care for all the arguments in Babylon in defense of new.

There is nothing new under the sun - merely revised ways of viewing things ... some like to think it is "new ways of looking" ... but we all know only babies have a new way of looking at things. Society (drooling bully that it collectively is) soon beats that out of the wee upstarts. (I say drooling because, collectively, society drools after all that is shiny, flashily inconsequential and base). Anyhoooo ... here are some lovely illustrations in an old book from 1806. This book had been much read and studied in its day. This is hardly an incunable treasure, but it is a treasure of a sort for those who appreciate such ...

James Ferguson's Astronomy Explained Upon Sir Isaac Newton's Principles, and made Easy for those who have not Studied Mathematics ... &c., &c. - Published in 1806 in Philadelphia by Mathew Carey.

Who is Professor Booknoodle?

Professor Booknoodle is an autodidactic book dealer from the early 20th century who has found that he has been inexplicably transplanted to the 21st century. The Professor has adjusted nicely. He still pursues bookselling as an avocation, and sells the occasional item. The Professor has noticed a change in the complexity of shipping. But his biggest perplexity is, in his own words, "How the deuce did I get shipped to the future?" Professor Booknoodle is the online avatar of Josiah Booknoodle, one half of the bookselling team that makes up Brothertown Books.